What was the first double album in rock music?
The rules for releasing rock music were fairly rigid during the 1960s. As an emerging art form, rock and roll wasn’t commonly seen as being an album-focused genre until The Beatles revolutionised the format. Most original rock artists like Chuck Berry and Little Richard were more well-known for their singles, with “studio albums” mostly being compilations. But by the mid-1960s, the LP became the gold standard for almost all recording artists, including those who wanted to push the boundaries of what an album could be.
Once the long play record was introduced in 1948, an obvious problem came up. The acetate could only hold roughly 45 minutes of music in total. That meant that full operas, concertos, and concerts would have to be paired down in order to fit on the vinyl disc. Only two years after the first LPs were printed, a solution was presented in the form of Benny Goodman’s The Famous 1938 Carnegie Hall Jazz Concert, one of the first non-classical recordings to be released as a double album.
Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, the double album was rarely implemented outside of classical and jazz. But during one week in 1966, two rock artists sought to push the boundaries of what was considered an acceptable album length.
In 1956, record producer Norman Granz established Verve Records with the goal of being on the cutting edge of jazz music. The label’s first release was a double album – Ella Fitzgerald’s Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Cole Porter Song Book – and Verve continued to forge a new path in the record business. By the early 1960s, it became imperative for the label to sign rock acts in order to keep up with the changing music scene. Among the artists who received a deal was Frank Zappa and his band, The Mothers of Invention.
With a background that had more to do with classical music and avant-garde sound collages than rock, Zappa was keen to push rock music into a more complex direction. That meant expanding the genre into the double album revolution. The Mothers of Invention had recorded over an hour’s worth of material for their debut LP Freak Out!, including the eight-minute ‘Help, I’m a Rock’ and the 12-minute ‘The Return of the Sun of Monster Magnet’. With no intention of editing his work down, Zappa was set to become the first rock artist with a double album when he finished sessions in March of 1966.
Then came Bob Dylan. The eccentric New York folk icon had already transitioned into rock music by 1966, and with that change came a whole flood of new songs that Dylan recorded in both New York and Nashville. Dylan was one of Columbia Records’ biggest stars, so when his sessions produced more than 70 minutes of material that Dylan insisted on using all of, they were forced to agree. Dylan continued production on Blonde on Blonde all the way up to just a few weeks before its release in June.
Whether by fate or coincidence, Dylan wound up being the victor in the rock double album race when Blonde on Blonde was released on June 20th, 1966. Just seven days later, The Mothers of Invention released Freak Out! on June 27th, 1966. Within the course of a week, rock and roll now had two double albums to catapult the genre into the future. By the following years, double albums had become more common, but the race between Dylan and Zappa proved to be the most important in setting the rock double album trend in motion.
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